Cloth
by Kuro Guardian
Summary: “I am a curse woman Itachi, and a fool. My granddame warned me and my dreams warned me and finally when my best dream became real you the child I wove from my dreams have killed it and now me.” [Mikotocentric]


When Mikato Uchiha was a child, she dreamt of many things. Things as wide and breezy as the cloth she quietly weaves in the clam, red room of her womb. "My child I dreamt of many things", she whispers to the child that must be a girl. Many, many simple things like being beautiful or happy, maybe even happily married. She dreamt she'd see the world and one bright happy day she'd have a daughter who would be the World and who she'd mean the world to. She cups her hands around her swelling middle hiding her worries behind the cloak of her dark, velvet hair. Her mother's hair was the coverlet beneath which she dreamt all the never-ever-coming-true dreams, as her grandmother's voice wove remembrance through stories into her thoughts, her soul. 'A witch with a soul?' Her laughter fills the dust-filled room, the only place she can hide from their prying eyes. A laugh becomes a sob, because if her luck holds true this wish will fail as all the others have before.

Sitting at the low, oak table she is serene as a flower's reflection - the raking of her in-laws' gaze scrapes her already raw nerves. She can see their thoughts as though their empty heads were transparent - her husband is proud to have proved his vitality, her in-laws are afraid of her as always and by extension, the one she carries. She smiles graciously as the hope beneath her heart continues to grow while she plays her part. Their desire for the life within her is nauseating ruining an already fragile appetite. Reaching for her cup, she knows her own want must burn like a forest fire if she wants to win this tug-of-war. She wants a girl, she needs a girl - too soon her magic along with herself will wane permanently; the Huntress moon never to return. She drops her cup watching the pieces scatter. The tealeaves write a brief message - a tower, a priest, the magician… The fire is too wild quickly devouring the table and sending her kiln-bred in-laws fluttering away. Standing carefully she paces away to sit by the window in the den. Sighing she knows they will blame her for this, that by noon tomorrow no one will speak to her afraid of being cursed. A non-shinobi making fire spontaneously - a witch.

They've always called her a witch as they've always called her grandmother one before her. Her mother was always the weakest one, too quiet and mild - her one effort of strength a failure. Nothing like her and her precious granny who knew all the Uchiha stories, all their sins and flaws. Granny who held all the clan secrets and gleefully whispered them into her grandchild's ears. Making bread in the well-worn kitchen, she sitting on the counter kicking her chubby little legs. Looking back now it seems as though they were always in the kitchen with her entirely too small to be able to remember. And one time, "Do you know what the legend of the Tengu is about?"

Shaking her head no while her grandmother smiled her secret smirk - the one that always made her face so very blank. Old, brown hands knead the dough her low, warm voice a singsong: _once upon a time, a man refused to lose gracefully because he was very willful. And the reason why was because this man was as empty as the moon's word and so there was room within him for many a devil. So refusing to lose gracefully and tired of losing anyway, he decided to be spiteful. Being spiteful, he threw away everything: life and soul and sanity - all very small things in the scheme of things. For him at least._

She must have looked confused because then she remembers a bright white smile from a brown, wrinkled face - something like a kindly apple tree. "But grandmother what has that to do with Tengu?" Her grandmother laughed freely something Mikato's mother never did, and the sound was like snow under foot. They never leave her alone; he stands behind her fingering his coat sleeves and trying not to breathe. Just yesterday, his brother who stood there yesterday broke his leg walking home. Shinobi are never so clumsy. She hates his eyes worse then Fukagu's ever were. She is bundled tightly in cashmere, silk, and some poor thing's fur. Her lips have long ago turned blue so that she resembles a Yuki-onna.

There is a bright red apple in her hand and it is the only thing of color right now. Her hands are bigger now, but she can still see a big, red apple in a small, pink palm. It was summer and the fool was dressed in full black trying not to sweat. There was a taste in her mouth, a certain blood-burn taste of knowing, knowing he wants her. This too tall boy-man, the most eligible bachelor in the clan, nay the village wants her - the Mad Woman's little Oddling. He wants her and why shouldn't he? She is tall, lithe and prettier then all the girls her age and most of the ones other then her. Her perfect, pearly teeth gleam down at his too-serious face. He is eighteen, she is only twelve.

The flip of fins just underneath her heart and Fugaku's arms hold too tight, too close. She knows he fears her leaving - she is the one who haunts his dreams and for now he stills loves her for it. His mint-laced breath strokes her long, swan neck, her overlong hair a blanket beneath them. She speaks a memory into her long, white hand prepared to swallow it so that her child might know the world is not fair. It was spring and she was seated beneath a frail tree. He is beside her again attempting to look dignified although they both know he is terrified. Last week some of the teenagers went after her again. They still haven't found the last one. He's holding a bunch of purple tulips; their hearts are golden.

A dragonfly hovers over her palm. She smiles at him trying to be non-threatening, "Are those for me?" He hands them to her and his skin is as over warm as all the normal Uchiha. They said she and her granddame had ice water in their veins. Looking into the hearts of the tulip her eyes dilate as she reads an afternoon spent aimless in a small, dusty, airless room. Her mother's hair is still nearly a solid black with but a single elegant lock of grey. It is a grey as gray as saltwater on a cloudy day - strangely enough, her eyes are the same shade. It's been said her mother was a throwback to the Hyuuga. She will doubt that until she meets little Hinata; quiet humility isn't she associated with Hyuuga.

Imiko's hands lay like small, skint corpses in her lap, another morning spent washing off imagined blood. "You'll marry who you're told to." Silly girl that she is she laughs because she is the maiden and the broken puppet woman before her is the lady and her odd, old grandmother is the mad, mad hag. No one can harm her, no one can force her; she is not a thing to be tamed… especially by something as mundane as the elder's will. He shifts nervously in front of her - little boy in big man clothes. The flowers have stained her hands golden in protest of her slow crushing of them. Golden hands and she remembers a story about a fisherman by the sea. _'My final wish is that she never leaves me though I might free her if I choose to.' _A headless, golden statue always faithful from it's stance in the trophy room. She can see in his eyes that she is little more then a fetish to him. As such, her smile is fragile as she stares up at him. "Are we betrothed my gentleman?" _'Golden trees wait for me and thee…'_ Her grandmother will soon be dead, she herself is still fourteen.

She is the maiden and her mother the lady, but soon it won't matter and besides her grandmother is dead. Her great, splendid, powerful grandmother is dead. So then, this circus of a ritual - this farce of a marriage is okay. Their hands on her body are intrusive and by the smirk in their eyes, they enjoy this invasion of her space without fear of retaliation. The face they are creating over her own is unfamiliar and thus unwelcome like her foolish mother. No, she must hold her mother close since Imiko will be the new hag and she will be the lady and her daughter will be the maiden. Now she smiles and of course, her attendants become nervous. She feels better as much because of their fear as the reason she has thought of. It's not as though she could have gotten herself with child, though she might have tried and there **are** those who walk the forest. Too late now to find a handsome tree-lover, her eyes - those beautiful gilded windows into a fierce, strange world are - damp and burning. She is glad no one has stayed here with her. 'If I had the sharigan I'd kill them all for doing this to me - I **am** the tiger and the lady.'

She blinks her burning eyes deciding to be glad if only because the rest of her is presentable and no one dares look her in the eyes. Not yet anyway and he will be the perfect lover she dreamt of so that her want for him is like an inferno wanting to be filled. Her desire for him will eventually be her downfall. Of course, at that time, she didn't know this and even later, she won't fully understand. Then however, she knew she was beautiful even more so then she dreamed and it is because of her beauty she is being married to a man she detests. Instead of gold, it seems she will be an ivory statute; white rice powder face and hands, snow - white silver-stretch kimono, and snowdrops vie with white orchids within the rigmarole of her coffered hair. So much white… How appropriate to look like a corpse when she can feel herself dying.

Watching an old woman called auntie make the gingerbread she craves she listens to her matter-of-fact grandmother as she carefully pierces an egg's shell. "I've never liked that story. What kind of man lies with an unknown woman who may well be a corpse however beautiful she is?" Listening to her grandmother talk about everything under the sun is how she gets through her wedding night. A wedding night she had to endure because her grandmother was dead and there had to be a child - a maiden. She closed her eyes as he kissed her. Sleeping beauty or more likely Snow White. Was Snow White a kind of witch? Or maybe her mother who made her daughter as she wished? Skin like snow, lips like blood, and hair like ebony. Surely, she is as talented as that woman who couldn't even survive long enough to hold her heart's desire. So she prays in her mind where surely they'll never get her. She prays, 'please be kind Huntress, give me a daughter 'even if she is as small as my thumb.'

As her clothes are slid off she imagines a child - a girl child as small as her thumb. A daughter as utterly perfect as she is small. Behind her eyes, she smiles imagining she spoons the little one down her false husband's throat as her fearful mother moans in the corner. Within her father's empty belly the child would grow to full size. A few minutes of waiting and then yay! No more unwelcome hands. She has to try hard not to laugh in his face, already she is considered odd. Already her position is weak, fragile. Soon though when she has her daughter she will spit in all their faces before taking her revenge.

Despite her morbid thoughts she is stronger then her mother refusing to scream the withering curses her mother did killing her husband as well as her on frail spirit. There will be time after she has got her daughter. Oh, but it can't come soon enough his hands blocks of ice as wooden in their movements as an uncared for training dummy. "Look, well little dummy the yolk doesn't lie. If you wish to escape, you must let your desires die. If you don't they will cut down you and yours even as they turn you Hope to Damnation."

She cannot have this child soon enough she knows as she concentrates on the tattoo within. She always sits by the garden now as though she waits for a fox wife intent on stealing her husband away. 'Good bye and good riddance.' She smiles her special smirk, the one felt by all but seen only in her eyes. No one looks her in the eyes. The newest watcher coughs quietly before spitting into the garden. He will be toothless by next fall while her baby flashes her mouthful of teeth charmingly. She sighs as she pictures her little girl swimming merrily in claret-waters to the sound of drums. She tells herself it will be a girl, this baby will. Her long, pale hands begin hypnotic patterns upon the great red moon of her brocade-covered belly. Her hands are as white as the snow-blanketed garden that silently prays with her sympathetic to her pain. She wishes she could feel sympathy for the puppet woman mother who will soon fall asunder. Instead, she damns her breaking the circle once again until her child might be lady with babe.

"You'll be a girl." And she thinks to help the child to be a girl by weaving it together from her scattered dreams. 'Little one I dreamt I'd be beautiful, I dreamt I'd be happily married to the most wonderful man and we'd have you and I'd see the world because the world would be you my angel.' And although that isn't exactly true, it's true enough so she continues. "Once."

_Once a child was born of snow and want, a little girl with long, black hair like the silk of a spider's thoughts. She was an exceedingly beautiful child and immensely clever. Sadly, there were more clever ones then she and one day she was caught by one. He caught her in a cage of whispers, the barely there whispers of conspiring old monsters blind with greed. Each day this more clever one, eyes like the desperately hunger things of the deep, to feed and speak with her. One day willowed down to a husk of herself, she spoke back. No one had ever told her that words spoken outside the circle could be just as binding._

_So she became property and grew bitter. So bitter that her throat grew smaller and smaller until she could no longer speak. Having nowhere to go her spiteful words swell her belly until she look pregnant. The miserable man she belonged to carved her open like the golden goose and two globs of viscous black jumped out. They quivered once and then twice and became boys. The first one was named Itachi and the second was named Sasuke, between themselves they destroyed everything the too clever man valued along with him. It was thus that even dead the woman was glad, the more so because being dead she had no need to claim her actions and mistakes._

And that was a dream told; sadly it was a true dream. She wouldn't remember it amongst all the days she sat in the sun. Everyday she spent at least an hour somewhere in the sun where she could see nothing without fear of being seen herself. Stretched out like a cat she told her dream child and then her dream man's child stories - witch stories full of doubts and warnings no one ever listened to. As the cicadas hummed incessantly, she stroked her roundness as she told another tale.

_Once, once a woman swallowed the moon because she had been told to. It was large and bitter leaving a deep feeling of cold behind it. As soon as the last piece slid down her throat she fell to the ground paralyzed with hurt. For a day and a night she laid still in terrible pain ignored by those who watched her. Finally she gave birth to a red child as distant as the moon. His eyes spun like shuriken as the world was devoured by the black flames that sprung from his feet. _

She gave birth to a boy child the first time she was got with child and named him Itachi because weasels are bright and excellent at escaping. No she did not love him, could not her heart to full with bitter disappointment. Even so she still reverently hoped her calm, cool child could escape the cage she had not. She smiled prettily as she handed her perfect son into the elder's greedy, grunge-caked hands. _Once there was a man who would not lose…_ Shortly thereafter in the dim, wormwood-tinted time after her failure she met her dream man. She remembers chryseriums a bluish-purple smudge at the edge her vision her Buddha-calm baby taking up her vision.

It doesn't matter that he isn't a girl… her mother has died destroying any chance of new circle. The streets are crowed because she refuses to shop in the district tired of their sugar-dusted bullshit. Her pretty child hair is impossible as his chubby hands find her face. Clumsy with despair and fatigue she walks right into the tall man. Rattled she fumbles an apology as she looks up into his eyes - eyes like the sky: wide, clear, and deeply unsettled. _Once there was a woman who loved the sky and though it burned her, she would not part with it._

'This one will surely be a girl.', she thinks as she angrily tends her mother's grave - her never-really-there mother who even dead will hardly speak to her, will not love her. She blows her flyaway hair out of her face only slightly pleased at her own absurdity. Fugaku never talks anymore, only barely sees her so that cutting off her nearly knee-length hair barely rates a raised eyebrow on his part. It's finally come to past that he resents his need for her, his desire, his obsession. An obsession he has passed onto his son who watches her from the trees as distant as Polaris. They both know that though she speaks kindly to him she doesn't love him, but then she has never truly loved anyone since her grandmother left her for golden trees and painless knees. Oh, well at least she has her beauty, her lover, and maybe her little girl who will be the world. She stops and stares back at him. He is a beautiful boy and bright - he would have made an excellent daughter. An Amazonian daughter to save her and tear down the blasphemy of this clan. Or not. Her little weasel doesn't seek to escape as he should, perhaps because he is always watching her.

He's still watching a year later angry now as she changes the second boy she has had. Bitter and headstrong she has closed her Door. She will have no more children, not if they are destined to be boys despite her song prayers and story magic. Itachi as jealous as lover sits against the wall. She smirks bitterly; he is a poor substitute for one who left her gone into the red madness never to return. She tickles the chubby little belly before her as she speaks to the older boy. _Think before you act little fool!_ "I am a cursed woman Itachi. I have beautiful boys as fragile as girls as strong as witches, but never the girl I've always wanted. I have a husband as cold as the North Wind and just as absent instead of the happy marriage I wanted. I have no circle and no power yet I am never allowed to forget my past and thus my place. My dreams are ashes; I have no hopes - except for your brother. I hope he will be happy and safe - he's all I have left of my dream man."

His eyes become as opaque as mirrors and for a moment she remembers how sure she was of a powerful girl - could she have had a warlock instead? Calmly he stands and strangely he smiles as normal as any other six-year-old child. As her little boy leaves she is reminded of the little men she used to play with amongst the trees. _A wrath disturbed…_

Her hair is still as black as it's always been and quickly growing toward her waist again. However, she knows she is no longer maiden or lady. In no time at all she will be a hag and her sons will marry a girl she'll teach to be the Lady. Now is the time to try once more for the maiden - her precious world child. She cries when she is with child again, alone in the bathroom with Itachi sitting outside the door back against the wall. They both know this will be it - a girl like she always wanted. She cries with the electric copper taste in her mouth of Knowing her hopes and dreams have been manifested this time. She can feel the tension from Itachi, but it's been too long since she actually looked at anyone much less him. If she would look she'd see just how cursed she truly is. He isn't outside when she finally regains her composure.

That night she make the onion dish Sasuke favors knowing well that it makes her eyes an unattractive red. She will not jinx herself this time. When she begins to show she will leave and damn these foolish men. Itachi watches her, a smirk in his eyes. It's the same one she sees from the floor two nights later dry eyed as the little heart stops beating inside. His eyes whirl like shuriken and they are a deep red. "I am a curse woman Itachi, and a fool. My granddame warned me and my dreams warned me and finally when my best dream became real you the child I wove from my dreams have killed it and now me." He doesn't really understand because she never taught him to understand. She nursed him on an astringent teat of hatred and resentment while she remained as frigid as the moon. "You will turn my Hope into Despair… so tell me -


End file.
